


the situation is a lot more nuanced than that

by FanaticDomainExpert



Category: Dungeons and Daddies (Podcast)
Genre: (or more accurately a re-meet cute), Alternate Universe - Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV) Fusion, Alternate Universe - Lawyers, Bisexual Male Character, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV) References, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Internal Monologue, M/M, Meet-Cute, Mental Health Issues, Multi, POV Second Person, Panic Attacks, Stream of Consciousness, Undiagnosed ADHD, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, i want to make sure I get everything that could be triggering to readers, okay all of these tags sound really heavy but this fic is in essence just the first ep of cxg so
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:28:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27885274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FanaticDomainExpert/pseuds/FanaticDomainExpert
Summary: You run into Henry Oak again on a Monday.You didn’t think you’d ever see him again.(A Crazy Ex-Girlfriend AU)
Relationships: Carol Wilson/Darryl Wilson, Henry Oak/Darryl Wilson, Henry Oak/Mercedes Oak-Garcia, Minor Henry Oak/Darryl Wilson/Mercedes Oak-Garcia
Comments: 7
Kudos: 11





	the situation is a lot more nuanced than that

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNINGS:
> 
> A panic attack described in detail in the second person in Chapter 1 - starts at "He knows. Oh my god he knows. You want to throw up" and ends at "You blink. Once. Twice. Three times." Please take care of yourselves when reading.

You run into Henry Oak again on a Monday.

Mondays are hard. Obviously. Everyone hates Mondays - it’s plastered and printed on coffee mugs and puppy calendars pinned to bulletin boards, on the lit-up ads outside the cafe below your office, in the tight rehearsed smiles of the baristas that greet you by name and know your order by heart. In the firm, it’s less pronounced - we’re all excited to be here! It's the start of a new week! I’m glad to meet you, sir, why don’t you come this way and we can discuss everything in detail, let me take your coat! - but it’s there. You can feel it. 

So Mondays are hard, and they’re hard for everyone. You’re not special. You probably don’t even have it the worst - you work close to home in walking distance, half an hour away from your New York apartment that you bought as a wedding gift for your wife Carol, whom you’ve been dating since high school. You have a minivan and a comfortable job at a prestigious law firm that has quality health insurance and two weeks of paid leave annually. You’re doing pretty good, all things considered. 

All things considered, you’re good.

You’re good, of course you’re good! You have everything you’ve ever wanted. It’s good! Only that...well. You’re tired. Which, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t even that much of a problem really, it’s just. Should you be this tired? And not in an I-didn’t-sleep-well-last-night or Monday-morning-drudge-after-sleeping-in-all-weekend kind of way. It feels. Different. Archaic? It feels. Old. And plundering, and bone-deep. It feels  _ bad  _ \- if you still believed in souls you’d say yours desperately needs a vacation. 

Maybe you’ll browse through those destination cruise pamphlets Carol has on her nightstand. The beach sounds nice.

You make a quick note on your phone: “CAROL CRUISE - ASK?” as the elevator opens up to your floor. There are not that many people in this early, as usual, and you hoist your bag onto your desk with a quick nod to some of the overnight stragglers blearily making their way to the communal lounge. The lounge has some great couches - you try not to make it a habit to work through the night if you don’t have to, but sometimes projects fall into your hands that you can’t fit into the nine to five, so. You’re pretty well acquainted with them. They’re not kind to your back, but that’s what the chiropractor is for.

You down the last of your coffee, which does a bit for the tiredness. You still don’t feel quite awake yet, no constant forward momentum that’s propelled you from school to law to O’Neill’s, no thrum of ambition like a cord running through your veins always pulling, pulling,  _ pulling _ -

But you’re okay. Probably just need the caffeine to work through your system. 

Slowly, the rest of the office trickles in one by one. There’s an email in your inbox from the project manager about the section meeting this afternoon, which has been moved up to twelve, sorry for the late notice but please make sure to arrive on time. Shouldn’t be a problem, you’re already here. 

You close that tab and read another few pages of the PDF on your screen.

Law isn’t what you would’ve chosen for yourself. It’s not passion, but you were okay at it, and Dad sent you to school all expenses paid on the condition that you finish your degree. There was the unfortunate hiccup in first year, but after that was sorted out - you were warned that this is your  _ future  _ that’s at stake and to not jeopardize it more than you already have, second chances don’t come easy, son, so don’t squander it like you did the first time, okay? - you coasted right on through the rest of school with your Bachelor’s, marks sitting firmly above average. Not enough for Dad, but enough to get hired a couple of months out of university with an old roommate’s connections. He loves to bring it up every time you and Carol go over for dinner, but hey - you did get that degree.

And now you’re on the twenty-fourth page of a pharmaceutical company’s merger with another pharmaceutical company.

You check the time. It’s only half-past ten.

The rest of the morning goes by just about as fast, page by page - page twenty-five through thirty need to be copy-edited again, click, clause eight subsection one is too vague and you can find at least two typos, click, page forty-three is missing a header separating the company from its subsidiaries, click. So on and so on, etcetera.

You sink into the drone of it, glancing across your desk to check how much time has passed every now and then. It’s always less than you think, with these projects. There’s something about the monotony that makes time feel endless. The thing is, the merger isn’t even going to take that long - you can read through it in its entirety today and still have time to hang out and chat at the water cooler. Or, this would be the case, if your eyes didn’t start to lose focus. If you didn’t have to keep skimming over the same passage again and again and again and again. If you didn’t just spend half an hour absorbing absolutely nothing. 

You rub a fist across your chest to ground yourself in the highlighted text and blinking cursor in front of you. 

Geez, what is wrong with you today?

You frown down at your keyboard. Maybe you need another coffee.

“Hey, it’s Darryl! The man of the hour!”

You jerk your head up like you’ve been caught doing something wrong. Which you haven’t. You zoned out, but that happens. C’mon, Wilson, it’s fine. Easy.

You ease your shoulders down a notch.

You look back to a chorus of  _ shhhhh _ ’ _ s  _ as the source of the commotion saunters over to you with his arms flung wide, grinning ear to ear.

It’s Lance. 

_ The _ Lance, friend of a friend of a friend who you went on a blind date with because Carol asked you to - he has nobody to spend Valentine’s with, honey, and we go on dates all the time, don’t worry about missing this Valentine’s with me, the girls and I have a night planned anyway - and then, mortifyingly, rang you in for your interview two days later. 

The date didn’t go that badly, considering it ended up being a scheme Carol concocted to get her best friend jealous and worked up and finally ask Lance out - and after all these years in each other’s social circles, you consider him a close friend. But it’s still pretty freaking weird seeing him at work. 

Lance props his head on his fist as he leans against the cubicle, and you mirror him, putting down your mouse and leaning farther back into your seat. You ease your elbows into the armrests, trying to hide the tension in your body.

“Didn’t know you were allowed out from the receptionist’s pen,” you say, widening your eyes at him in mock surprise.

“Yeah, well, they gotta give us cattle a bathroom break once in a while,” he shoots back. “How’s the wife?”

“Wasting your precious pee break to ask about my wife?” You raise your eyebrows. “If you weren’t already married to Darren, I think I might have reason to be jealous.”

“Wait, you weren’t jealous before? What was I doing wrong?”

You open your mouth to tell him his first mistake was being gay, actually, but you bite it back. 

Lance would get it. Lance would laugh. But it’s really only funny when you’re both in on the joke - and not everyone in the office knows that you are. There are so many ways that what you were about to say can be misconstrued, where your careful rise in ranks would end in a visit to Human Resources. 

“Hey. Dickhead.”

Lance pushes himself off the wall and covers his mouth in a mock whisper.

“Do you think he’s referring to me or to you?”

You crane your neck over the divider at your desk neighbour, the one with the vampire actor name, Boreanaz Devin something or other, who flips both of you off without looking, eyes glued to his monitor.

“I don’t know, Lance, maybe he’s referring to Johnson and Johnson, the fucking family company. Seriously, some of us actually have work to do, you know. Go flirt in the break room or whatever.” His fingers fly across the keyboard. 

“Well, if  _ David _ says so.” Ah. David, that was his name. “C’mon Wilson, let’s go ‘flirt in the break room or whatever.’”

He jostles you out of your chair with surprising gusto and grabs you under your arms. Your stomach drops when you feel the chair moving, and you realize-

He means to drag you away. 

You scrabble for purchase so you can save the changes you made to the merger - yeah, you only edited the PDF four times in two hours, but the thought of losing your progress sends a cold bead of sweat down your spine. You can’t lose your work - you  _ can’t _ \- even if you barely touched your laptop  _ before  _ Lance came and distracted you. There’s no way you’re going anywhere until you know for sure that you’ve saved at least twice. 

Lance peers down at you as you flail at the desk and squints at your screen.

“Dude, you pressed save, like, five times. Calm down.”

You let the weight of your head drop back onto his chest. He’s right, you did do that. You already saved. But your finger itches to click one more time - just once. Just to be safe. 

Just to be safe.

Lance pats your head soothingly as his other hand pries your fingers from the mouse.

“I promise I’ll keep the flirting to a minimum and you can come back and save the document as many times as you want, okay? Gotta talk to you, though - preferably in private so that our good friend here doesn’t skewer me with his scary-ass office lamp”

He swings you up and out of your seat and you sigh in defeat, waving goodbye to the middle finger sticking up from a sea of bowed heads as Lance tows you backwards.

* * *

You run into Henry Oak again on a Monday.

On this particular Monday, your friend, maybe ex? definite pain in the ass coworker has you sit down beside one of the sleepers in the break room - probably got edged out of the lounge where the rest of them are passed out - and waves his hand back and forth in front of the poor schmuck’s face. You pin him with a look.

“Have to be sure he’s actually asleep,” Lance explains. “Got some big news for you that I’m not sure I’m allowed to share.”

You shrug off your blazer and tuck it around the guy’s shoulders. “Then don’t share it.”

“Aww, don’t be such a narc. It’s good news, and it’s about you, man! Look me in the eyes and tell me you’re not the least bit curious.” He frames his hands around his face and flutters his lashes at you. You roll your eyes and pull out the chair next to him. It scrapes across the linoleum tiles and you both freeze, eyes on the unconscious lump under your blazer, but they don’t move. 

“...Okay, so I might be a little bit curious. But!” You lower yourself into the seat and point a finger at Lance in warning. Before you can say anything to him about possible consequences, though, Lance’s brows shoot up and he grins wide, pointing back at you in triumph. 

“Yeah, thought so, you big faker.” 

Your words die on your tongue as your heart lurches at his words. 

He knows.

Oh my god, he  _ knows. _

You want to throw up.

But- but, how can he know? You don’t even know what it is you’ve been feeling, only that you’re hiding something, only that it’s too much to hide, and you can’t -  _ god - _ and you can’t even put words to the kind of restlessness that’s been making you so  _ fucking _ tired all the  _ fucking _ time - like you can’t stop moving and or you’ll never be able to move again, like there’s a weight you’re carrying all the time that you don’t remember picking up, like going to bed every night hoping that tomorrow you’ll be better - or,  _ fuck _ , hoping just a little bit that you won’t wake up at all - but if you don’t know, and he knows, then who else knows? Are you the only one who’s been blind to whatever’s wrong with you? What is wrong with you?

What is  _ wrong _ with you, you big faker?

What is wrong-

“Hey,  _ hey- _ ”

_ what is wrong with you you big faker what is wrong with you  _

“-fuck,  _ fuck _ ! What do I do, what do I  _ do _ , come on, Lance,  _ think- _ ”

-what is  _ wrong _ -

_ big faker bigfakerwhatiswrongwith whatiswrongwith what _

“-okay, you’re okay, Darryl, just breathe-”

_ wrongwrongbigfakerwhatisfaker _

what is-

“-hold… and breathe out, two, three-”

-what-

“-that’s it, Darryl. That’s it, keep going. Breathe in, two, three, four. And… out, two, three, four. You’re doing great. In, two, three, four… and out...”

-what is lance doing…?

You blink.

Once.

Twice

Three times.

And you stare down at him through a haze of tears. 

He smiles back up at you, relief palpable on his face, and you realize all at once what you’ve done.

Shit.

_ Shit. _

You flinch back from his extended hand, but your movement is too fast, too frantic, and you hate the look in his eyes as the force of it sends your chair flying backwards.

The sound it makes as it hits tile is deafening. 

Then, things get worse.

Things get worse, because of  _ course  _ they do, because you haven’t been having enough of a bad day already, because in your panic and self-loathing and not being able to fill your lungs with air you forgot that you and Lance weren’t the only ones in here.

You watch with your heart in your throat as the guy on the couch shoots up. He stares with wide eyes at you, as the blazer - your blazer, you think distantly, that’s yours - crumples to the ground.

Then he all but sprints out of the break room.

Oh, no. This is bad.  _ Fuck _ , this is really bad.

Not only have you fucked it up in front of Lance, who you only have a tentative friendship with, but you had another meltdown in public, where everyone else can see, where someone  _ did _ see, and you can feel the life you’ve built for yourself flying out of your grasp.

_ You’ve ruined it - you’ve ruined it  _ again.  _ What is  _ wrong  _ with you? _

You don't know what to do.

You don't know what to  _ do _ .

But you absolutely cannot be here right now.

* * *

You run. 

You don’t know what to do so you duck past Lance and scoop your blazer off the linoleum. You ignore the concern in his stance - you’re not some skittish wounded animal, you’re  _ not _ \- shame and embarrassment and guilt burning hot hot hot on your cheeks, and your eyes don’t leave your shoes as you mutter a quick apology and dart out the room.

You pace your steps, one foot in front of the other, like nothing happened, like this is just another Monday at work, like the effort of keeping yourself from shaking apart doesn't feel like wading through glass. But the only way forward is through, and so you bypass the elevator and make a beeline towards the stairs.

You open the door, close it quietly behind you.

_ Click _ .

You run.

On this Monday, you run and you run and you run, feet thundering down each floor, the echo of the stairs pounding in your ears in tandem with the thumping of your heart. One foot in front of the other, and after ten floors your chest is tight and your breath is caught in your throat, but it’s okay. It’s okay. This is a kind of breathlessness that you know. 

You run floor to floor to floor, and you see no one, and no one sees you - no one  _ sees _ you, and once upon a time, that would’ve scared you to pieces, but now you hold on tight to this reprieve.

After ten minutes of running you hit the landing of the last flight with a vigour that surprises you, and if you have to wipe the snot and tears away with the blazer balled up in your hands then that's between yourself and God and no one else. 

And then- 

And then.

Henry Oak. 

You push the door that opens up into the building’s loading zone, and natural light floods the stairwell, sun high in the sky and flaring radially behind the face of the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen. And you have seen him - many,  _ many _ times, from June through August for three years in a row until you started high school and without asking, Dad switched you from youth leadership camp to football training. You hadn’t gone back for four years after that, and when you graduated you were well out of the age range to do so. 

You didn’t think you’d ever see him again.

Henry looks different - older, obviously, since it’s been more than a decade, but better, too. His eyes are softer, kinder, framed by laugh lines, and even half turned away you can feel the happiness in his gaze. He looks settled in his bones the way he never did before.

He looks  _ calm _ .

Your legs start to move. The snot-lined blazer in your hands drops to the asphalt, forgotten, and you drift towards him like a moth to flame. 

Are you dreaming? He doesn’t seem real.

You don’t mean to start walking in his direction. You didn’t really have a destination in mind when you slipped into the stairwell - all you wanted was to get away from the office and away from prying eyes, and it would probably be wise not to linger near the building in your current state - but once you get going you can’t seem to stop, and by the time the sound of the door’s timed release snaps you out of your reverie you’ve crossed directly into his path. 

The sharp  _ bang  _ jolts you back into your body, and you stumble over a patch of uneven ground.

You run into Henry Oak on a Monday. 

Your shoe catches on something, you trip, and you - quite literally - run into Henry Oak. Henry, who you didn’t even mean to approach; Henry, whose face lights up as he recognizes you, as his brows raise in alarm, as you try to even your footing and bring your hands up to catch yourself; Henry, who you tumble into even as you try to pull yourself back, momentum propelling you forward.

You catch yourself on your elbows, and sprawled precariously on top of the guy you haven’t seen since eighth grade, you wonder how exactly your day has come to this.  _ This is ridiculous _ , you think. 

You lock eyes with him.

His cheeks are red.

The last time you were in this position - and isn’t it  _ absolutely ridiculous  _ that there was a last time, and that you still remember? - you were out on the lake during rowing lessons, two to a canoe, and Mercedes had mercilessly pelted both of you with spitballs as she maneuvered her boat next to yours. You had tried to twist around to retaliate as she retreated, but the flurry of movement had dislodged the oars and in the rush to grab them as they slid into the water you overshot, landing in Henry’s lap. 

This is different, but it feels the same. It feels like you’re suddenly back all those summers ago, sun beating down on your back, Henry’s fingers splayed across your chest and eyes wide and nervous.

Your face warms as you process that this is possibly the first time in months you’ve truly been at peace.

The sheer incredulity of your situation means there’s no room for your usual torrent of emotions after you make a social blunder, and then no room for any thoughts at all, because Henry’s lips quirk upwards one side at a time, and the cheeky bastard smiles up at you and wiggles his eyebrows. 

“Hi, Darryl.”

You burst out laughing.

_ This is ridiculous _ .

Ridiculous feels… good.

* * *

You offer Henry a hand as you roll to your feet and he ribs you for being such a polite gentleman. Although it might not seem it, with the creepy staring and subsequent knocking over, you do have manners, you tell him wryly.

You fall into your old banter easier than you thought you would, given all the time that has passed - Henry, though older and more settled, is still full of the same unbridled enthusiasm that age hasn’t seemed to temper, hands gesturing wildly as he tells you not to worry about bowling him over, it’s nothing compared to the time in college he ran into his professor’s kids and accidentally dropped his pyramid model on them, then lied to his professor about why he was late. 

Henry wants to treat you to lunch, he says, even though you’re the one who had so rudely inconvenienced him. He tuts at you, slings his arm across your shoulders - it’s already forgiven and forgotten, my man - and you duck your head in concession and hide your smile. It’s been a while since you’ve felt this warm. 

The knot of stress between your shoulder blades unfurls, just slightly, as his arm stays put and he pats your arm absentmindedly as you walk and talk. He tells you about being an amateur geologist, and volunteering at the West Covina museum during youth outreach programs. He tells you about applying to community college and leaving his father’s commune - you dart a glance at him, but the edges of his mouth are soft and his hands don’t shake, a stark difference from the barely contained rage you remember he would come back to the cabin with after weekly calls home. His words are cutting, but in a wry sort of way, and he smiles at you like he knows you understand. 

He tells you about Mercedes Oak-Garcia.

Henry’s hands are never still - you knew this about him, and now you know that it hasn’t changed, but there are certain things that have, and why does that hurt as much as it does? Calluses dot his palms, the crisp edges of his nails that are no longer bitten raw, and when his hand flutters around his face it catches the light and you stop breathing.

Of course you’ve noticed the ring. How could you not have? Henry rubs it like a touchstone, and despite the years apart you’re still in the habit of paying close attention to everything he does in a quiet sort of wonder. He doesn’t even look like he’s doing it on purpose, and your lungs overcompensate with a surge of happiness for your friend that is only mildly tinged with a sour feeling you can’t quite name.

You’re happy! You are, you’re happy for him, and you’re happy for Mercedes. They were possibly the only two friends that never took you at face value and always pulled you into their world without a second thought, who invited you to their secret dates away from the camp counsellors' eyes and held your hand by the campfire. Its hard to keep a relationship going through the transition of childhood to adulthood - and you would know, with how you and Carol steer clear of ever mentioning your rocky on-and-off years, even though those are long behind you.

You’re incredibly proud of who your friends grew up to be, even if you’ve had to hear about one from the other whom you lost all contact with for fifteen years before barreling into his life again.

Now that he’s hanging off your shoulders again, you don’t know how you’ve managed all these years without the steady weight of his hold. You don’t know how you’ll manage when you have to ask him to let go. 

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally meant to be a single chapter oneshot, but. Well. 
> 
> That being said, I do not have an update schedule - I am merely operating at the whim of the money in my brain that bangs around my skull until I've written something coherent. Please be patient with me! I have a semi-maybe-kind of plan for where this fic will go, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions and I am already pulling onto the highway.


End file.
